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Te Papa Tongarewa, the national museum of New Zealand, stretched the bounds of fire engineering design when it was built. Designed at a time when fire zone models and nodal evacuation simulations were on the forefront of fire engineering design, the building represented a heavily engineered approach to fire safety with a complex array of fire safety systems. This paper outlines the case study of a reassessment of the museum using computation fluid dynamics and agent based evacuation modeling. Read More...

Solar panels are most efficient if they operate at lower temperatures. We are installing solar panels on a workshop roof and the question arose, "What is the best solar panel spacing to maximize solar panel convective cooling?" This post uses PyroSim and FDS to evaluate some different solar panel mounting options to maximize solar panel convective cooling.
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This post demonstrates how to use Pathfinder to simulate movement in a subway station, with trains arriving and departing from the station. A growing list of features not specific to evacuation, such as occupant sources and assisted evacuation, make Pathfinder applicable to a much broader range of pedestrian movement problems. Read More...

Medium density fiberboard (MDF) is an engineered wood product that is widely used in the interior design of buildings and in furniture because of its good performance, ease of use and cost efficiency. However, like all wood products, MDF poses a fire risk. While the literature contains a lot of studies for wood pyrolysis and burning, MDF has not been thoroughly investigated yet. In this work, we study the pyrolysis of MDF subjected to transient irradiation in the form of parabolic pulses. While the majority of studies in literature employ a constant heat flux, we use transient irradiation to obtain a more comprehensive case. Read More...

Considering the limited number of studies on assisted evacuations, this work aims to provide a deeper insight on the modeling issues to simulate such an event. Based upon a preliminary risk analysis using the Fire Risk Assessment Method for Engineering (FRAME), the most critical floor will be selected and modeled using Pathfinder, an agent-based evacuation model. Read More...

This release adds import support for PyroSim 2017, adds a new behavior to wait until a specified time, and improves the flexability of stairs and doors to simplify working with imperfect CAD data. Read More...